According to Abraham Lincoln, public opinion always has a central idea from which all its minor thoughts radiate. The central idea of the American Founding—and indeed of constitutional government and the rule of law—was the equality of mankind. This thought is central to all of Lincoln...

To the Editor of the Wall Street Journal:
My friend Jim Wilson ("Faith in Theory" WSJ 12/24/05) is behind the curve of controversy in his flat endorsement of the decision of a Pennsylvania federal judge who "struck down efforts of a local school board to teach 'intell...

The crisis of American constitutionalism today turns on the interpretation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the jurisprudence of something called the "living constitution" has largely replaced the traditional jurispr...

Hillary Clinton's "vast right wing conspiracy" seems to have undergone a metamorphosis into a "vast Straussian neo-con conspiracy," judging from the outpouring of articles, letters, and radio and television interviews denouncing President Bush's foreign policy as a war-cr...

There are rare times and places, in the long story of man, when outbursts of genius supply civilization with the supreme examples of human greatness. It is the contemplation of these that raises us to levels not unworthy of the divine image in which we are created. Such moments of supreme achievemen...

On the night of the tenth of May, 1940, on the eve of the ill-fated Battle of France, Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. As he went to bed, he tells us, at about 3 a.m., he was "conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole...

I.
About ten years ago I had a letter from Dante Germino, asking why Strauss's students had paid so little attention to the work of Eric Voegelin. Earlier, Dante had asked me to lecture at Virginia. On that occasion he had been suddenly hospitalized. Although nothing serious had resulted, I d...

It was gratifying that President Bush came out firmly against the University of Michigan's versions of affirmative action, and that his Justice Department filed an amicus brief to that effect. Yet the President found it necessary—in today's climate of opinion—to pay lip service t...

History will record that Woody Hayes (who died March 12, 1987) and I began our careers at Ohio State the same year, 1951. No one in the press has taken note of this fact, and history is always slow about such things, so I will climb down from my pedestal that the world may be aware of this famous ju...

Gordon Marino, in "Boxing Pay is Featherweight Class" (Leisure & Arts, Dec. 12), writes that "the great Joe Louis, so fleeced by his managers...ended his days scrambling for a living as a greeter in a Las Vegas gambling casino."
Joe Louis may have been fleeced by his manag...

George W. Bush has said he wants to change things in Washington. On this President's Day, we find him attempting this change in a most profound way. President Bush is to be commended for his recent Proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day, in which he reminds his fellow citizens of th...

There has been an uncivil war between Joe Sobran and Jack Kemp on the question of the character of Abraham Lincoln as man and statesman. In many recent utterances Sobran has repeated things Lincoln said, mainly in the 1850's, which are presumed to show Lincoln as less of an advocate of the right...

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday called upon the Palestinian Authority to agree to a truce and return to the bargaining table. "I call on our neighbors to return to negotiations," Sharon said. "Peace requires painful concessions by both sides [and] can be achieved only a...

No recent political subject has generated more heat and less light than that of campaign financing. John McCain seems determined to make it the hallmark of his political career, doggedly pursuing in the Senate what he failed to accomplish in last year's presidential primary. But in doing so the ...

The peaceful and orderly inauguration of George W. Bush, as 43rd President of the United States, after the closest election in American history, is an event deserving thoughtful and thankful reflection. There were present on the inaugural platform former presidents of both parties, as well as the gr...

In the present political silly season, no subject has generated more heat and less light than that of campaign financing. Senator McCain has practically made it the center of his drive for the presidency, and Messrs. Gore and Bradley have not been far behind. The only public official who has consist...

Last year, at the Second Lincoln Day Colloquium of the Claremont Institute, I gave my "False Prophets of Conservatism" lecture. In it I had the pleasure of quoting Pope John Paul, celebrating the self-evident moral truths of the American Founding, and calling for a renewal of those truths ...

In January 1988 I received a remarkable letter from two younger scholars, Larry Arnhart of Northern Illinois University, and Leonard Sorenson of Assumption College (Massachusetts). The questions they addressed to me about God and man, the Bible and philosophy, were more direct and comprehensive than...

In your January 13, 1998 editorial "McGovern Republicans" you remark: "Others cite the GOP's founding as the anti-slavery party, but forget that even Lincoln was a moderate on slavery. He opposed expanding it into new territories, but until the Emancipation Proclamation vowed to r...

The Spring 1994 Intercollegiate Review featured a section entitled "Not In Memoriam, But in Affirmation: M.E. Bradford." I welcome this, or any tribute, to my departed friend. As many readers of Intercollegiate Review know, my eulogy of Bradford was published in National Review, and was we...

In "A Reply to My Critics," (The National Interest—Winter 1989/90) Francis Fukuyama writes:
We owe to Hegel our modern understanding of history as an evolution from primitive to modern, through a succession of stages of "false consciousness" during which men believed in ...

Contrary to our 'paleoconservatives,' the truths of the Founding do not depend solely upon tradition or divine revelation, but are 'discerned in human nature' by human reason grounded in 'self-evident truths.'" —Distinguished fellow Harry V. Jaffa

Harry V. Jaffa argues that America is very close to the best regime possible in practice, given the nature of the modern world. The bonding of religious and civil liberty we enjoy in America would have been impossible in the ancient world.

Civil servants are granted an awesome amount of power, but they bear an awesome responsibility to interpret and execute the law rightly. What principles should guide them in carrying out their task, asks Kevin R. Kosar.

The Daily Caller's Ginni Thomas interviews Claremont Institute President Brian Kennedy
"Despite his low approval ratings, President Barack Obama has not been challenged by Congress to the degree that many conservatives believe that he should be.
Claremont Institute president Bri...

Liberals believe that the American principle of religious liberty requires not only the separation of church and state, but also the separation of religion from politics. They argue that a prohibited "establishment of religion" exists whenever government promotes religion at all.
Some c...

[This review originally appeared in Vol. VI, No. 1 of the first iteration of the Claremont Review of Books, in the 1988 spring issue]
Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind was published in 1987, and it has been bought, if not exactly read, by millions of Americans since th...

America has less freedom of speech today than it has ever had in its history. Yet it is widely believed that it has more. Liberal law professor Archibald Cox has written: "The body of law presently defining First Amendment liberties" grew out of a "continual expansion of individual fr...